Nuclear proliferation, Zionism, and the global economy are just a few of the insightful and surprisingly prescient topics scientist Albert Einstein discusses in this volume of collected essays from between 1931 and 1950. Written with a clear voice and a thoughtful perspective on the effects of science, economics, and politics in daily life, Einstein’s writings provide an intriguing view inside the mind of a genius addressing the philosophical challenges of the Depression, the Second World War, and more.

The World as I See It

In the aftermath of the First World War, Einstein writes about his hopes for the League of Nations, his feelings as a German citizen about the growing anti-Semitism and nationalism of his country, and his myriad opinions about the current affairs of his day. In addition to these political perspectives, The World as I See It reveals the idealistic, spiritual, and witty side of this great intellectual as he approaches topics including "Good and Evil", "Religion and Science", "Active Pacifism", "Christianity and Judaism", and "Minorities".

Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

An inspiring collection of essays, in which Albert Einstein addresses the topics that fascinated him as a scientist, philosopher, and humanitarian. Divided by subject matter - “Science,” “Convictions and Beliefs,” “Public Affairs,” etc. - these essays consider everything from the need for a “supranational” governing body to control war in the atomic age, to freedom in research and education, to Jewish history and Zionism, to explanations of the physics and scientific thought that brought him world recognition.

Theory of Relativity: and Other Essays

E=mc2: It may be Einstein’s most well-known contribution to modern science, but how many people understand the thought process or physics behind this famous equation? In this collection of his seven most important essays on physics, Einstein guides the listener step-by-step through the many layers of scientific theory that formed a starting point for his discoveries.

Essays in Science

In this fascinating collection of articles and speeches, Albert Einstein reflects not only on the scientific method at work in his own theoretical discoveries, but eloquently expresses a great appreciation for his scientific contemporaries and forefathers, including Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, and Niels Bohr. While Einstein is renowned as one of the foremost innovators of modern science, his discoveries uniquely his own, through his own words it becomes clear that Einstein viewed himself as only the most recent in a long line of scientists driven to create new ways of understanding the world and to prove their scientific theories.

The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton's Manuscripts

When Isaac Newton died in 1727 without a will, he left behind a wealth of papers that, when examined, gave his followers and his family a deep sense of unease. Some of what they contained was wildly heretical and alchemically obsessed, hinting at a Newton altogether stranger and less palatable than the one enshrined in Westminster Abbey as the paragon of English rationality. These manuscripts had the potential to undermine not merely Newton's reputation, but that of the scientific method he embodied.

Humanism: Bolinda Beginner Guides

With historical adherents as various as Mark Twain, Einstein, Freud, Philip Pullman, and Frank Zappa, Humanism’s central quest is to live with meaning with no need for the supernatural. Showing how humanists make sense of the world using reason, experience, and sensitivity, Cave emphasises that we can, and should, flourish without God. Lively, provocative, and refreshingly rant-free, this audiobook is essential listening for all - whether atheist, agnostic, believer, or of no view - who wish better to understand what it means to be human.

Letters to Solovine: 1906–1955

From their early days as tutor and scholar, discussing philosophy over Spartan dinners, to their work together to publish Einstein’s books in Europe, in Maurice Solovine Einstein found both an engaged mind and a loyal friend. While Einstein frequently shared his observations on science, politics, philosophy, and religion in his correspondence with Solovine, he was just as likely to express his feelings about everyday life.

The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, and the literary skill to conceive of a powerful secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A. C. Grayling has done, creating a nonreligious bible drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions.

Atheism for Dummies

Atheism For Dummies offers a brief history of atheist philosophy and its evolution, explores it as a historical and cultural movement, covers important historical writings on the subject, and discusses the nature of ethics and morality in the absence of religion. A simple, yet intelligent exploration of an often misunderstood philosophy.

I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist

Now, more than 50 years after the release of his enduring epic Spartacus, Douglas reveals the riveting drama behind the making of the legendary gladiator film. Writing from his heart and from his own meticulously researched archives, Kirk Douglas, at 95, looks back candidly—and often with self-effacing humor—at his audacious decision to give public credit to Trumbo, thus effectively ending the notorious Hollywood blacklist.

Hate Mail from Cheerleaders: And Other Adventures from the Life of Reilly

Each week, when Sports Illustrated's 21 million readers open up their magazine, many turn right to the last page - because that's where to find SI's most popular feature: the Life of Reilly column, written by best-selling author Rick Reilly. This new collection includes 100 of Reilly's favorite columns from the last six years, along with an introduction by Lance Armstrong.

Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, a powerful symbol of freedom and the American dream. For decades, the myth has persisted that the statue was a grand gift from France, but now Liberty's Torch reveals how she was in fact the pet project of one quixotic and visionary French sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. Bartholdi not only forged this 151-foot-tall colossus in a workshop in Paris and transported her across the ocean, but battled to raise money for the statue and make her a reality.

This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works

In This Explains Everything, John Brockman, founder and publisher of Edge.org, asked experts in numerous fields and disciplines to come up with their favorite explanations for everyday occurrences. Why do we recognize patterns? Is there such a thing as positive stress? Are we genetically programmed to be in conflict with each other? Those are just some of the 150 questions that the world's best scientific minds answer with elegant simplicity.

Utopia

Utopia is the name given by Sir Thomas More to an imaginary island in this political work written in 1516. Book I of Utopia, a dialogue, presents a perceptive analysis of contemporary social, economic, and moral ills in England. Book II is a narrative describing a country run according to the ideals of the English humanists, where poverty, crime, injustice, and other ills do not exist.

Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning

Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning - a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things - from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs.

The Idiot [Tantor]

Just two years after completing Crime and Punishment, which explored the mind of a murderer, Fyodor Dostoevsky produced another masterpiece: The Idiot. This time the author portrays a truly beautiful soul and one of Dostoevsky's greatest characters---Prince Muishkin, a saintly, Christ-like, yet deeply human figure. The story begins when Muishkin arrives on Russian soil after a stay in a Swiss sanatorium.

From Aristotle to Wittgenstein and Zizek, 50 Philosophy Classics provides a lively entry point to the field of philosophy. Analyses of key works by Descartes, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Heidegger, and Nietzsche also show how philosophy helped shape the thinking and events of the last 150 years.

The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond

Henry David Thoreau has long been an intellectual icon and folk hero. In this strikingly original profile, Michael Sims reveals how the bookish, quirky young man evolved into the patron saint of environmentalism and nonviolent activism. Working from 19th-century letters and diaries, Sims charts Henry’s course from his time at Harvard through the years he spent living in a cabin beside Walden Pond. Sims uncovers a previously hidden Thoreau - the rowdy boy reminiscent of Tom Sawyer, the sarcastic college iconoclast, the devoted son who kept imitating his beloved older brother’s choices in life.

Utilitarianism

This expanded edition of John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism includes the text of his 1868 speech to the British House of Commons defending the use of capital punishment in cases of aggravated murder. The speech is significant both because its topic remains timely and because its arguments illustrate the applicability of the principle of utility to questions of large-scale social policy.

Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive

How does society function when you can't trust everyone? When we think about trust, we naturally think about personal relationships or bank vaults. That's too narrow. Trust is much broader, and much more important. Nothing in society works without trust. It's the foundation of communities, commerce, democracy, everything. In this insightful and entertaining book, Schneier weaves together ideas from across the social and biological Science & Technology’s to explain how society induces trust.

Napoleon's Hemorrhoids…And Other Small Events That Changed History

Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying, historical what-ifs, Napoleon's Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs. In one of Phil Mason's many revelations, you'll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. You'll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield.

The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America's First Sports Spectacle

The Great Match Race is a captivating account of America's first sports spectacle, a horse race that pitted North against South in three grueling heats. On a bright afternoon in May 1823, an unprecedented sixty thousand people showed up to watch two horses run the equivalent of nine Kentucky Derbys in a few hours' time. Eclipse was the majestic champion representing the North, and Henry, an equine arriviste, was the pride of the South.

Evangeline

Evangeline describes the betrothal of an Acadian girl named Evangeline Bellefontaine to her beloved, Gabriel Lajeunesse, and their separation as the British deport the Acadians from Acadie in the Great Upheaval. The poem then follows Evangeline across the landscapes of America as she spends years in a search for him. Finally she settles in Philadelphia and, as an old woman, works as a nun among the poor. While tending the dying during an epidemic she finds Gabriel among the sick, and he dies in her arms.

Publisher's Summary

An inspiring collection of the great thinker’s views on a rapidly changing world.

Nuclear proliferation, Zionism, and the global economy are just a few of the insightful and surprisingly prescient topics scientist Albert Einstein discusses in this volume of collected essays from between 1931 and 1950. Written with a clear voice and a thoughtful perspective on the effects of science, economics, and politics in daily life, Einstein’s writings provide an intriguing view inside the mind of a genius addressing the philosophical challenges presented during the turbulence of the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the dawn of the Cold War.

This authorized Philosophical Library edition features information from never-before-seen documents housed at the Albert Einstein Archives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

I anticipated far more of the inner human in Einstein than what sounded like a scripted (maybe ghost-written) oft-repeated marketing piece for 1-world government. Such a concept might end up what the world needs. However I did not detect a depth of thought in the structure that convinces me that Einstein knew political science and the predispositions of mankind well enough to be an authority. I'd surely trust him in a dissertation on mathematics or physics.

If the group of essays were, in fact Einstein's own words they were over-simplistic and bereft of safe-guards for human liberty. The narrator has a long list of achievements, affiliations and attributes, not all of which filter down to a person who I'd want crafting an omnipotent, armed entity, which called the shots for the entire planet. In fairness, most of the essays were written without a crystal ball that made visible today's economic, political and human circumstances. Despite my enjoying the English language and a good vocabulary, I found the text to often stumble over itself, seemingly in an effort to sound erudite, more-so than to deliver the content.

His commentary on fellow scientists and scholars was, in contrast, interesting.

I might recommend this to a sociology student or a grad student in political science as a work that might reveal thought processes and philosophical persuasion techniques I have not studied. On the whole, the book was almost a waste of time and was surely a disappointment.

What do you think your next listen will be?

The sound of a discussion to get credit from Audible for a book I regret experiencing (about 75%)

How could the performance have been better?

Difficult to say. I found it lacked any references to modern circumstances and how the world has evolved after the essays were written. I think the reader had excellent tonality and diction.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

It demonstrated how even complex minds can use simplistic reasoning as a basis of establishing levels of control over others. This need not be considered as sinister but more of a validation of the saying; "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Any additional comments?

Variety is the spice of life and some spices don't suit some palates. Chalk one up for not so good.

The narration is excellent (but a bit slow so 1.25x worked for me) and Einstein’s humanism and commitment to peace shine through. Nevertheless I found the content is only interesting from a historical context. This collection includes letters, speeches and essays on Zionism, socialism, unionism, world government, pacifism, and quite a few eulogies. The most interesting aspects was seeing subtle changes in Einstein’s outlook over time but this would likely have been more interesting in a biographical form.

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